Visits From Victor
by Wilusa
Summary: Three characters encounter Victor in dreams. Is he real, or just a personification of each dreamer's subconscious? Whatever the answer to that question, can he give them the help they need?
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: _One Life to Live_ and its characters are the property of ABC; no copyright infringement is intended.

x

x

x

She didn't know where she was, or how she'd come there.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the man who stood before her, his eyes alight with a yearning that matched her own.

"_Victor!_ Oh, my darling, I've missed you so!" She tried to throw herself into his arms.

But instead, she encountered an invisible barrier. Like those "force fields" in science fiction movies.

Victor winced. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "I love you, want you, but we can't touch. Can't come any closer than this." He held up his hands, as if he were pressing his palms against a pane of glass.

Trembling, she followed suit. Placed her hands opposite his.

They made an awkward, "through-the-glass" attempt at a kiss.

Then she took a reluctant step backward, so she could see him better. _Drink in_ the sight of him!

"All...all right." She was weeping now. But she pulled herself together, resolved not to waste a moment of this meeting, imperfect though it was.

Smiling through her tears, she said, "Victor...I'm so thankful to have our beautiful baby! I love him so! I wish I'd been able to bring him with me - not sure why I couldn't - so you could see him. But you probably know all about him.

"I asked _you_ to help him, to protect him. And I'm sure you did - helped save his life! Todd did all he could, he was amazing, but I know he only succeeded because of you."

Victor wasn't smiling. "I couldn't help you, Tea. What do you think I am, some kind of archangel? I'm just a dead guy. Being dead doesn't give me any sort of 'powers.' I wish it did."

"I don't believe that. I _know_ you've been watching over us and helping us."

He shook his head. "I couldn't help you then, Tea. But I want to help you now...if you'll let me."

"H-help me now? Of...of course..." She felt a stirring of unease. "B-but...I don't think I _need_ help now, Victor! Except for our not having you, everything's going well for me and our son.

"I was afraid he might have hemophilia...I'm sorry I never mentioned that risk to you, but the truth is, neither of my pregnancies was planned. We could have coped with hemophilia. But fortunately, we won't have to. The baby lucked out and escaped it, just like my brother did. He does have another blood disorder, but it's much less serious. So our lives are just about perfect!"

"_Think_, Tea," Victor said quietly. "When the baby was born, you knew something was wrong. He didn't cry. And Todd didn't want you to look at him - probably because his color was so bad. He was probably blue."

"Yes, I know that." _Though I don't like to remember it._ "But the woman Todd met - she seems sort of crazy, but she really did breathe life back into the baby. When I took him from Todd outside that shack, he was fine!"

Victor nodded. "He may have been - or seemed - 'fine' then. But I just want you to remember there'd been a problem at the outset.

"Now, think about all the things that happened later.

"When you had time to look closely at him, you didn't think he resembles anyone in either of our families.

"A doctor told you he was underweight - said that's understandable when a baby comes early. But _our_ baby was full-term! And the way you looked the last few weeks, you might have expected him to be _above_ average size.

"Then he turned out not to have a blood disorder you'd thought he might have, but to have one that _wasn't_ expected. More common with other ethnic backgrounds. And it's a condition your doctor - your very good doctor - should have detected before he was born.

"Don't you think all that, taken together...suggests something?"

Toward the end, every sentence he'd spoken had hit her like a hammer-blow.

"No..."

"Face it, Tea. At least put it into words."

"You think..." She swallowed hard.

She knew that if anyone but Victor had been prodding her, the words would never have come.

But now she got them out. "You think the baby I've been accepting as mine - _ours_ - isn't really ours."

"I _know_ he isn't. And deep down, you know that too. I only know what you know."

When she didn't respond, he said quietly, "Why haven't you looked around this room, Tea? The room you can see on my side of the barrier? You've never looked beyond my face...because you don't want to acknowledge what else is here.

"_Who_ else is here."

She made herself look.

And moaned, as she saw the crib.

But then Victor reached into it...and held up the baby for her to see. A squirming, smiling - and, yes, _drooling - _baby, who looked right into her eyes, and greeted her with a happy gurgle.

"Ohhhh!" She was laughing and crying at the same time. She finally managed to say, "He's really all right? Safe with you?"

"Of course he is. And if we can't all be together, I'm grateful for your having given me this wonderful gift."

"B-but...what's going to happen now? Will you be able to _raise him_, somehow? Or will he be a baby forever?"

"I don't know. Like I said before, I only know what you know."

She forced herself to think again of the living world. The world that was "living" in the conventional sense.

"If there was a baby-switch, I can't imagine when it could have happened. Maybe at the hospital? When my baby was taken away from me to be examined...maybe, then, he actually died? And the nurse brought me a different baby?"

Victor looked blank. "Like I said, I only -"

"I get it. You only know what I know." And she was in the realm of pure speculation now. "Why would a nurse have done that? Is the baby I have a foundling, one who'd been _abandoned_ at the hospital?

"Would it be best, in that case, if I just keep silent? Let it play out the way that nurse intended - with a child whose mother didn't want him being raised by someone who does, and never having to know his birth mother rejected him?"

Victor pursed his lips. "You don't _know_ the baby was abandoned. If you tell the hospital what happened, and no one else claims him, you'll probably be allowed to keep him. And that way, you won't be left wondering whether you did the right thing."

She couldn't suppress the thought _But what if someone does claim him?_

Then Victor said, "You don't know what's become of our baby's body..."

She went rigid. "My God. How could I have forgotten that? I'm thinking of the _real_ baby being with you, being happy...but I still need to have his physical body given a proper burial! _Burial with you_."

"Y-yes. My being able to keep him may even depend on that. I don't know. I only know what you know."

"Then I _will_ investigate, get to the bottom of what happened. I promise. And, Victor, I want you to tell our son that no child I may adopt will ever _replace_ him! He's irreplaceable...just like you!"

He gave a smug smile that was pure Victor. "_Of course_ we're irreplaceable."

Laughing, weeping, feeling about to burst with love for the smiling man and drooling baby, she hurled herself against the barrier again...

x

x

x

And found herself sitting up in bed.

Shaking, sobbing.

_**Oh...my...God.**_

She remembered every moment of the dream, every word they'd spoken.

And whether or not she'd really been with Victor, she finally knew - at the conscious level - what she'd known, subconsciously, all along.

_The baby I brought home to Llanview isn't mine._


	2. Chapter 2

He didn't know where he was, or how he'd come there.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was the man who stood before him, glaring balefully at him.

"_Victor?_ Damn it, get out of my head! It's bad enough Irene won't leave me alone. I can't take you, too!

"I'm sorry, all right? Sorry I killed you, sorry about everything. Now will you _please_ go away? I have enough on my mind right now."

Victor gave an exaggerated sigh. "Sometimes I wonder if you _have_ a mind, Todd. You sure weren't using it when you let Tea think Sam Morgan's baby is hers. Don't you understand that with those babies having been born the same day, everyone having been in or near that shack, and the babies' expected medical problems being reversed, the truth is bound to come out?"

"I didn't hear about the 'medical problems' till it was too late!" Todd protested. "The hemophilia, and whatever the other thing was - 'Mediterranean anemia,' I think. How could I possibly have foreseen that?

"Tea saw me with Sam's baby in my arms, jumped to the wrong conclusion. And I just _couldn't_...tell her what I should have told her. Then Heather Webber lied to me, said she had reason to believe Sam had been abandoning her baby. So I thought everything might work out for the best.

"Now I know I've created a God-awful mess. But I could only set it right by breaking Tea's heart. Crushing her. I should think you'd be the last person to want that."

"You should _know_ Tea isn't easily crushed," Victor said curtly. "She's a strong woman. You're hiding behind her, using her as an excuse.

"She's sure to learn the truth about the baby. But you could redeem yourself in her eyes by doing something else for her."

"Uh...what?"

"Well, for starters, you could put an end to this crap about your having killed her husband! Maybe you could identify the person who really shot me - even have some of the plotters brought to justice."

Todd was starting to feel as if he'd fallen down a very strange rabbit-hole. "I _did_ kill you! There's no getting around it."

"No, you didn't. _Think_, man! When did you last see me...and how?"

Todd flinched. He didn't like thinking about that. But he said, "I last saw you lying on the floor. After I'd shot you. I thought you were already dead."

"You saw me _lying on the floor_," Victor repeated. "You _remember_ that. Try to go back further. Do you actually remember seeing me standing? Do you remember anything I said? If you were the shooter, I must have said _something_ to you, when you popped up inside a house that should have been locked!"

"N-no." Todd was trembling now.

"Do you remember how you got in? _Think_ about it! Don't just parrot what other people have said."

"I-I saw the keys on the ground, and..." After a moment's thought, he shook his head, and said slowly, "No. I don't remember bending over, or even looking down. It was raining hard - I wasn't doing any unnecessary looking around.

"The door was open. Just a few inches, but it was open."

"The door was open," Victor continued. "You came in. Saw me lying on the floor. And you thought I was already dead. What made you think that?"

"The...the blood..." Todd's voice trailed off.

"So by the time you saw me, there'd been a lot of bleeding." Victor gave a bemused shake of his head. "May have looked worse, spread on the floor, than it really was - I was still alive when Tea got home.

"But the point I want to make is that you didn't shoot me. You got there after someone else had done it."

Todd mulled that over.

Then he said quietly, "I'd fantasized about shooting you. Imagined how I'd feel, things I might say. So maybe I've gotten the fantasies mixed up with reality. I've thought I remembered pulling the trigger...but maybe I didn't.

"But even if I didn't shoot you...I _killed_ you, anyway.

"I should have called 9-1-1. And tried on my own to stop the bleeding, till EMTs got there.

"I didn't. I panicked and ran, thinking you were already dead. And you'd lost so much blood before Tea found you that you couldn't be saved.

"So I'm just as guilty as if I _had_ pulled the damn trigger."

Victor sighed. "No, you're not. Will you cut out the dramatizing? Quit making this all about you - _your_ guilt!

"You're not my favorite person. But believe me, I'm a lot madder at the one who really did shoot me."

"Well, who was it?"

"I don't remember. I only know what you know."

"Oh, _that's_ a big help!"

"You know more than you think you do, Todd. To begin with...hasn't it occurred to you yet that if you didn't shoot me, there's something awfully fishy about your gun having been identified as the murder weapon?"

That brought Todd up short. After a beat, he said, "Th-that's impossible! I _must_ have shot you -"

Victor said impatiently, "No, you didn't. Think back. What did you do with the gun you'd been carrying around?"

"I g-gave it to Louie. A homeless guy - a good guy, who'd saved my life a while back. He was going to turn it in to the police as part of a program for getting guns off the streets. To get a little money for it.

"But..but...he didn't turn it in. He gave it back to me later..."

"Yes, I know. And you, genius that you are, used it to try to frame Tomas." Victor sounded disgusted.

"But if you're thinking _Louie_ shot you with it," Todd went on, "you're wrong. Aside from the fact that I can't imagine him having a motive, I gave him the gun _after_ I'd seen you unconscious and left you for dead."

"Okay, Todd." Victor seemed to be making another stab at patience. Speaking slowly and reasonably. "Think about some of the people we've had to deal with lately. Irene and her group - almost all of them rogue CIA agents. Fully capable of producing ID that would make them seem to be _current_ agents, in good standing.

"Suppose they'd had me shot. And a few hours later, got hold of your gun. They could easily have butted into the autopsy, claiming they needed to observe it for some reason involving national security. And when the ME wasn't looking, they could have _switched bullets._ Replaced the one taken from my body with one from your gun - which they would, of course, have fired through something. So _that_ would be the bullet sent on to the police."

Todd felt the blood drain from his face. "But..._Louie?_"

"I'm sorry, if you thought he was your friend," Victor said gently. "That may be why you haven't been able to put the pieces together till now.

"But this 'Louie' would have had to be in on the plot. They couldn't have taken your gun from him by force, because you said he had it later - gave it back to you!

"They'd probably offered him a paycheck he couldn't resist. And it's likely _he_ shot me. That would explain his having been close enough to see you arrive and leave, probably with your gun in plain sight. Then he followed you and got you to give it to him.

"If it's any consolation, he probably had regrets and went against his orders when he gave it back to you. Irene's gang would have wanted him to turn it in to the police. It was registered to Dorian - Blair would have told them she was sure you'd had it - and your prints would have been all over it."

Todd was still grappling with the idea. "So it was Irene's group - whoever wasn't in custody at the time? Acting on orders they'd been given previously, by her or Baker?"

"And improvising," Victor chimed in, "when they saw opportunities too good to pass up. They may have hired Louie _because_ he'd saved your life, was viewed as a friend of yours. If he'd been spotted after killing me, the police would have suspected you'd hired him."

_**"Damn!"**_

They stood in silence for a minute or so.

Then Victor said, almost casually, "By the way, haven't you thought it strange that the last time you saw me - lying on the floor - _was_ the last time you saw me?"

The distracted Todd couldn't come up with a better response than "Huh?"

"If you've never noticed, there's usually a wake when someone dies! A _viewing_. Where you see the body laid out in a coffin."

"Oh, that." Todd thought for a moment, then said, "I heard you'd left instructions with...the proper people...long ago, that you didn't want anything like that when you died. Didn't want anyone but the medics and mortuary guys to look at your dead body."

"And you didn't think that was sort of odd?"

"_You're_ 'sort of odd'!"

"Hey, you should have known I wasn't 'odd' enough to write a will leaving everything to Irene! At a date when no one in Llanview knew she was alive."

Todd had come to attention, realized this might be important. "Wh-what are you getting at?"

"You know I'd been brainwashed."

Todd had never been sure he believed that. _Or maybe I knew it was true, but didn't want to admit it?_ To avoid an argument now, he said simply, "Yes."

"I'd done things - and put things on record - that I wouldn't have freely chosen. And I didn't even remember them.

"But the instructions I'd given would have made it fairly easy for my death to be faked. By me, if I'd been consciously aware those provisions were in place - which I wasn't. Or by someone else, someone who stood to _inherit_...

"I'm just surprised no one's thought about that."

"Wait a minute! Are you saying _you're not dead?_"

Victor looked perplexed. "I don't know. I only know what you know."

_"You don't know whether you're dead or alive?"_

After a long pause, Victor shrugged. "I might be dead. Or in a coma. Or I might just be asleep and dreaming, same as you."

"Or you might be a figment of my imagination!"

"Yuck. _That's_ an unpleasant thought."

"For once, we agree on something."

They stood, glaring at each other.

And then, for some reason, Todd was struck by the absurdity of it all.

Victor - or whoever or _what_ever he was - must have had the same thought.

Because they both burst out laughing.

On a sudden impulse, Todd thrust out his hand, hoping to shake hands with his brother. But his hand struck some kind of barrier...

x

x

x

And he found himself sitting up in bed.

Stunned.

_**Oh...my...God.**_

He remembered every moment of the dream, every word they'd spoken.

And whether or not he'd really been with Victor, he finally knew - at the conscious level - what he'd known, subconsciously, all along.

_I didn't kill my brother!_

_Irene's group had him shot...probably by Louie. If I can prove that, or just convince the people I care most about, I can clear myself. Maybe I can even get justice for Victor, and some satisfaction for Tea...to make up, at least slightly, for the grief she'll go through because I messed up so badly after her baby died. _

_And...is there a chance Victor might be alive? That I could bring him back to her?_

_The fact that his death __**could have been**__ faked doesn't mean it __**was**__. There's no real reason to suspect such a thing. I can't justify asking for an exhumation._

_But money talks. A dozen or so people, at least, would have had to be involved in a scheme like that. Bribed, or maybe just intimidated, by the phony "CIA." Now that months have passed, someone may think it's safe to spill the beans..._

_**Money talks.**_


	3. Chapter 3

He didn't know where he was, or how he'd come there.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was the man who stood before him, looking faintly amused.

"Wh-who are you?" He took a step backward.

"You know who I am. But I'll tell you anyway. Victor Lord, Junior. Not a name I would have chosen - but I'm getting used to it."

"Y-you can't be here. You're dead!"

"You're _dreaming_," Victor informed him. "Dead people wander into dreams all the time. Pesky critters - can't keep them out.

"But I'm not one of them. I'm alive."

His reluctant dream-host retreated a step farther. "I know you're dead! Your brother Todd murdered you - there's even been a trial. It was all over the Internet."

"You're really slipping! You used to know you can't believe everything you see on the Internet."

Though Victor hadn't advanced toward him, hadn't made any threatening move, the Reluctant Host looked around for a weapon. "If you're not dead, I'll kill you myself! You tried to kill me once, and I won't give you another chance."

Victor looked pained. "I never tried to kill you. Whoever told you that lied. You can't trust human beings...they're even less reliable than the Internet.

"You're the last person I'd want to kill. I dropped in tonight because I want to help you."

The Reluctant Host glared. "I don't need anyone's help."

"I know your, ah, _professional_ plan seems to be going well," Victor acknowledged. "In fact, I'd like a piece of the action.

"But if you don't mind my saying so, it's sad that a man like you is living with a woman he doesn't even like - insists on separate bedrooms - and locks his bedroom door every night, because he's afraid of her."

"I'm not afraid of her!" But the Host knew his face had turned crimson. "H-how the hell do you know who I'm living with? Let alone whether I'm sleeping with her..."

"I know everything you know. Even things you aren't aware you know."

"I don't like this dream. I want to wake up!"

"Sorry, it's not that easy," Victor told him. "But I _can_ help you! I know what the problem is.

"I'm sort of shocked that you were willing to get cozy with Allison Perkins in the first place. Any port in a storm, I guess...and you didn't remember the woman you'd left behind.

"Anyway, you hurt Allison's feelings when you wouldn't read her manuscript, or let her read it _to_ you. It's a chronicle of the lives of Victoria Lord and the people closest to her. And you knew, deep down, that it had to include material about _you_. The real you. The most painful experiences of your life.

"Allison didn't understand that. She's loony, but she never meant you any harm. When you agreed to a sexual bondage game, and she had you tied to a bed, she thought it would be fun for _both_ of you if she kept you tied up - gagged, so you couldn't protest - and made you listen to her reading. She thought you'd get a kick out of her having, so cleverly, gotten her way!

"She had no idea she was really torturing you. Forcing you to at least half-remember that another woman had shot you, abducted you, kept you tied to a bed and, for all practical purposes, raped you. Made you engage in the kind of sex that could give her a baby, by threatening to kill the woman you loved at the time.

"And after you'd endured all that, you were wrongly convicted of murdering the woman who'd held you prisoner. You were _executed_, by lethal injection! And then resuscitated - because the authorities found out, almost too late, that your supposed 'victim' wasn't dead."

By now, the Host was crumpled on the floor, weeping.

But he looked up at the intruder and whispered, "How the hell do you know all this?"

"Before I tell you," Victor replied, "I need to find out how much _you_ consciously know now. Do you remember those things happening to you?"

"Y-yes," the Host choked out. "Sort of. But...I d-don't understand...when or how they could have happened! They don't seem to...fit into my life."

"Do you have clear memories of your life? Apart from that?"

"No." His voice was barely audible. "I think I...suffered some brain damage...when you tried to kill me."

Victor sighed. "It was Malcolm Baker who told you that, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"And you believe you're Walker Laurence."

"Of course I'm Walker Laurence!"

"Mitch's brother...and it was you who orchestrated that prison break. Coordinated the whole thing with Mitch, on Baker's orders."

"Yes. Baker had heard rumors Allison's book could be a bestseller, and he planned to kill her and have it published as his own. Baker's been good to me - promised to make me his Number Two, before he was arrested in Llanview."

Victor said grimly, "I suppose I should be grateful he only meant to kill Allison, and not you."

"I still don't understand..."

"Okay," Victor told him, "I'll try to make this simple. You're not Walker Laurence. As a matter of fact, you killed Walker Laurence, years ago! Don't worry about it - you had good reason.

"Last summer, Baker's group tried to kill you - on his orders, or those of his former boss. You were badly wounded. With neither of the top people available to tell them what to do next, they kidnapped you. I suspect they thought Baker could demand a ransom for you, but he later decided that would be too risky. So he hit on the idea of making you one of his 'operatives'...and they brainwashed you into believing you're Walker Laurence. You'd been brainwashed before - that may have made it easy for them to do it a second time."

"Th-this is crazy!" the Host protested. "You're Victor Lord Junior. You were made over surgically to look like Walker Laurence. And you look exactly like _me_. So if I'm not Walker Laurence, who am I?"

"I look exactly like you because I _am_ you," Victor said gently. "I'm you, and you're me. See? It really is simple. You're Victor Lord Junior."

When the Host didn't reply, but just sat on the floor staring up at him, Victor continued, "And good came from that awful episode with Margaret Cochran. The woman who raped you? You have a wonderful son, eight years old now!

"And you have an amazing wife. You _have to_ remember _her! _When you'd been shot - this last time - and thought you were dying, she found you on the floor..."

The Host let out a gasp. "I...I _do_ remember! _Tea!_ I remember her...trying to make me smile. And I th-think...I think...I managed to say 'I love you.' "

"Yes, you did. Now come on, get up! You don't want to be 'found on the floor' _again_, do you?"

"I couldn't be. Remember? If I'm still in my bedroom, the stupid door is locked!"

There was no barrier between these men. The dream visitor pulled his host to his feet. They exchanged goofy grins...

x

x

x

And Victor Lord Junior found himself sitting up in bed.

Overwhelmed.

_**Oh...my...God.**_

He remembered every moment of the dream, every word they'd spoken.

Remembered _everything_.

_All right. The first thing I'll need to do is shake Allison!_

After that...oh yes, he certainly would continue with the plan "Walker Laurence" had set in motion. Even use that name for a while, as an alias. "Walker's" upcoming project would be much more enjoyable than battling Todd for control of the _Sun_.

Having learned how to "beat the house" in certain corrupt casinos - to really clean them out - he was poised to _take over_ said casinos. Their owner, a mob boss in Port Charles, was so distracted by personal problems that all his enterprises were ripe for the picking.

But still, he wouldn't wait more than a day to make contact with Tea. He _ached_ for her! He'd sweep her off her feet - didn't doubt for a moment that she'd willingly plunge into a new adventure with him. He'd touch base with all four of "his" children, too.

He remembered everything...and in this first, excited rush, he thought he could _do_ everything, all at once.

At the top of the list...

_I wonder how Tea would feel about our having a baby?_

x

x

x

The End


End file.
